When it comes to Thunderbolt storage devices, generally the more internal drives it has, the faster performance it offers. This is because the Thunderbolt standard offers 10Gbps speed, while the fastest internal drive, be it a regular hard drive or a solid-state drive, is limited by the SATA 3 standard that caps at just 6Gbps.

The G-RAID with Thunderbolt drive from G-Technology.
Dong Ngo/CNET

The more drives means the vendor can aggregate the performance of each drive into a total throughput that's faster than the top speed of each drive. For this reason, Promise's Pegasus R6, a six-bay Thunderbolt drive has always been the fastest. Now, the G-RAID with Thunderbolt drive can challenge the Pegasus.

The new dual-bay drive from G-Technology is the only I've seen that was able to outdo the Pegasus R6 in one of the tests, not by much, but still very impressive. Compared with other dual-bay and single-volume Thunderbolt drives, the G-RAID was definitely the fastest.

It's also the most expensive, however, costing about $150 or $200 more than the WD My Book Thunderbolt of the same capacity. And like the rest of the Thunderbolt drives, it doesn't support any other connection types and doesn't come with a much-needed Thunderbolt cable, either.

Still, if you have the funds, at $700 for 4TB (or $850 for 6TB or $1,000 for 8TB), the new drive will make a great storage solution. For more information, check out the full review of the G-RAID with Thunderbolt external hard drive.

About the author

CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
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